德语助手

This broadcast is brought to you by LMU Munich

Now I will switch to English

and I have the pleasure and honor to introduce Robert B. Brandom to you.

Robert Brandom is the professor at the University of Pittsburg

He earned his B. A. from Yale University

and his PH. D from Princeton University

In 1994, he published his famous book Making It Explicit

followed in 2000 by sort of shorter version

Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism

Robert Brandom has also published a collection of essays

on the history of philosophy Tales of the Mighty Dead, 2002

He delivered the 2006 John Locke Lectures at Oxford University

and has published under the title

Between Seeing and Doing: Towards An Analytic Pragmatism, 2008

Allow me some further, remarks

There is a distinction

between an earlier and a later form of analytic philosophy

says Richard Rorty, in his introduction to a new edition of

Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind

The earlier form is the form of empiricism

developed out of the work of Russell and Carnap

The later form is a, as Rorty puts it

post-positivistic form of analytic philosophy

To Rorty, the shift from the earlier to later form

is connected to the works of Quine, Wittgenstein, and Sellars

The general idea of this shift from the earlier to the later form

is a critique of the myth of the given

to quote the famous expression of Sellars

What does this expression mean

Well, this way of philosophy is deeply influenced

by the gap between the world and mind

the gap between the real things and the not-so-real worlds

which refer somehow to reality

Whatever the world is, it's a given

Whatever the things are, they are a given

On the other hand, there are thoughts and words are not given

And this seems a disadvantage to our thoughts and words

because it's the world which makes our thoughts true or false

The things of the world of the truth makers

but they are for themselves not true

but given

The gap between world and mind

is the working place for numerous bridge builders

They want to bridge the gap

in order to gain true knowledge of the world

But in the end

they just discover that there is no possible bridge

between the world and the mind

because the gap is too deep

both sides are too different

Hegel called this a desire of certain fear of truth

They fail to establish a bridge between the world and mind

because we want to fail

And the best way to guarantee the failure of all attempts

is the myth of the given

Once the gap between the given world and a totally different mind

is established

truth is impossible

and skepticism is the only option

Hegel is quite clear on this

To oppose skepticism

one must oppose the myth of the given

Robert Brandom, as I understand

stands a tradition of this later form of analytic philosophy

especially in the Pittsburgh tradition of Sellars

Therefore, he opposes the gap between the world and mind

and claims, quote

"that not only appearance

but also the reality is conceptually articulated."

In the old days, this claim was called idealism

For Hegel, idealism was true

because it was the only way to defend realism

Is idealism the true realism?

I think this is the very question

And if I'm not mistaken

this is the question for Robert Brandom as well

We're about to learn more about it

and I'm looking forward to your talk

Hegel opens the first paragraph of

the Introduction to the Phenomenology of Spirit

by introducing a model of cognitive faculties

that he supposes will be most familiar to his readers

in its Kantian form

with which one takes hold of the absolute

or as the medium through which one discovers it."

He thinks no account that this general shape

can meet basic epistemological criteria of adequacy

By showing that, he hopes to make his readers appreciate

the need for an alternative model

which he will then supply

The general character of his complaint against

construing cognitive faculties

on the instrument-or-medium model

seems clear enough

He offers a two-fold summary

That model leads to

1) the conviction that there is an absurdity in the Concept

of even beginning a process of knowledge designed to gain

for consciousness that which is in-itself

and 2) that there is a strict line of demarcation

separating knowledge and the absolute

The first objection alleges

that theories of the sort he is addressing

must lead to a kind of skepticism

a failure to make intelligible the idea

of knowing how things are in themselves

The second complaint

points to a diagnosis of the reason for this failure

the model excavates a gulf separating consciousness

from what it is consciousness of

Professor Hooter was just talking about

under the heading of The Myth of the Given

Hegel expands on both these points

He fills in the charge

that instrument-or-medium theories lead to skepticism by saying

"if knowledge is the instrument to take hold of the absolute essence

one is immediately reminded that the application of an instrument

to a thing does not leave it as it is

but brings about a shaping and alteration of it

Or, if knowledge is not an instrument for our activity

but a more or less passive medium through w

hich the light of truth reaches us

then again we do not receive this truth as it is in itself

but as it is in and through this medium

In both cases we employ a means

which immediately brings about the opposite of its own end

or, rather

the absurdity lies in our making use of any means at all."

In either case

there is going to be a distinction

between what things are for consciousness

the product of the exercise of cognitive faculties

and what they are in themselves

the raw materials on which the cognitive faculties are exercised

Something about the character of this distinction

Hegel seems to be arguing, is incompatible with

what things are for consciousness

according to such a picture counting as

genuine knowledge of how things really are ("in themselves")

He elaborates the problem that was diagnosed in the passage I just read

It is that instrument-or-medium picture

"presupposes the notions about knowledge as an instrument and a medium

and also the notion that there is a difference

between ourselves and this knowledge

but above all

it presupposes that the absolute stands on one side

and that knowledge, though it is on the other side

for itself and separated from the absolute

is nevertheless something real

Hence it assumes that knowledge may be true

despite its presupposition that knowledge is outside the absolute

and therewith outside the truth as well

By taking this position

what calls itself the fear of error

reveals itself as a fear of the truth

Another famous passage of Professor Hooter

I'll repeat it

It is apparently of the essence of the instrument-or-medium model

to see such a "difference," "separation,"

two "sides" of one divide

and to understand the job of cognitive faculties to

consist in bridging that divide

The argument here seems to be that

if there is a gulf separating how things are in themselves

from how they are for consciousness

that requires the operation of cognitive faculties to bridge it

or re-unite the two sides

then all that investigation of those faculties can do

is re-institute the gulf or separation

I think we can see in these passages the general shape of an argument

But it is hazy

and it is hard to discern

both the exact outlines of the class of views it targets

and just how the criticism of them is supposed to work

The haziness of the argument I think

is due partly to the compression of its exposition

and partly to the metaphorical terms in which it is conducted

To fill in the details

one would have to specify

what criteria of adequacy for epistemological theories

Hegel is insisting on

what class of theories exactly he claims cannot satisfy those criteria

what features of those theories are responsible for that failure

and how, exactly, the argument for that conclusion works

In the rest of this lecture

I offer one way of sharpening

the argument Hegel is putting on the table here

along these four dimensions

and also an initial characterization of the shape of the alternative model

that Hegel proposes to replace the instrument-or-medium model

To get a better specification of the range of epistemological theories

that fall within the target-area of Hegel's argument

what is metaphorically labeled as the "instrument-or-medium" model

it will help to begin further back

The theories

he is addressing are representational theories of the relations

between appearance and reality

Representation is a distinctively modern concept

In order to understand how strings of algebraic symbols

could be useful, veridical, tractable

appearances of geometrical realities

Descartes needed a new way of conceiving

the relations between appearance and reality

His philosophical response to the scientific and mathematical advances

in understanding of this intellectually turbulent and exciting time

was the development of a concept of representation

that was much more abstract, powerful, and flexible

than the resemblance model of the ancients and medieval it supplanted

He saw that what made algebraic

understanding of geometrical figures possible

was a global isomorphism

between the whole system of algebraic symbols

and the whole system of geometrical figures

That isomorphism defined a notion of form

that was shared by the licit manipulations of strings of algebraic symbols

and the constructions possible with geometric figures

In the context of such an isomorphism

the particular material properties of what now become intelligible

as representings and represented

become irrelevant to the semantic relation between them

All that matters is the correlation

between the rules governing the manipulation of the representings

and the actual possibilities that characterize the represented

Inspired by the newly emerging forms of modern scientific understanding

Descartes concluded that this representational relation

of which the ancient notion of resemblance

then appears merely as a primitive species

is the key to understanding the relations between mind and world

appearance and reality, quite generally

This was a fabulous, tradition-transforming idea

and everything Western philosophers have thought since

no less on the practical than on the theoretical side

is downstream from it

conceptually, and not just temporally

But Descartes combined this idea with another

more problematic one

This is the idea that

if any things are to be known or understood representationally

whether correctly or not

by being represented

then there must be some things that are known or understood

nonrepresentationally, immediately

not by means of the mediation of representings

If representings themselves could only be known representationally

by being themselves in turn represented

then a vicious infinite regress would result

For we would only be able to know about a represented thing

by knowing about a representing of it

and could only count as knowing about it

if we already knew about a representing of it, and so on

In a formulation that was only extracted explicitly

centuries later by Josiah Royce

if even error (misrepresentation)

never mind knowledge, is to be possible

then Descartes thought there must be something

about which error is not possible

something we know about not by representing it

so that error in the sense of misrepresentation is not possible

If we can know (or be wrong about)

anything representationally

by means or the medium of representings of it

there must be some representings

that we grasp, understand, or know about immediately

simply by having them

The result was a two-stage, representational theory

that sharply distinguished between two kinds of things

based on their intrinsic intelligibility

Some things, paradigmatically physical, material, extended things

can by their nature only be known by being represented

Other things, the contents of our own minds

are by nature representings

and are known in another way entirely

They are known immediately

not by being represented

by just by being had

They are intrinsically intelligible

in that their mere matter-of-factual occurrence

counts as knowing or understanding something

Things that are by nature knowable only as represented

are not in this sense intrinsically intelligible

Their occurrence does not by itself entail

that anyone knows or understands anything

As I have indicated

I think that Descartes was driven to this picture by two demands

On the one hand

making sense of the new theoretical mathematized scientific forms

in which reality could appear

the best and most efficacious forms of understanding of his time

required a new, more abstract notion of representation

and the idea that it is by an appropriate way of representing things

that we know and understand them best

So we must distinguish between representings and represented

and worry about the relations between them

in virtue of which manipulating the one sort of thing

counts as knowing or understanding the other

On the other hand

such a two-stage model is threatened

with unintelligibility

in the form of a looming infinite regress of explanation

if we don't distinguish between

how we know represented

by means of our relations to representings of them

and how we know at least some representings

immediately, at least

not by being related to representings of them

The result was a two-stage model

in which we are immediately related to representings

and in virtue of their relation to represented

stand in a mediated cognitive relation

to those represented things

The representings must be understood

as intrinsically and immediately intelligible

and the representeds as only intelligible

in a derivative, compositional sense

as the result of the product of our immediate relations to representings

and their relations to represented

I want to say that it is this epistemological model

that Hegel takes as his target in his opening remarks

in the Introduction of the Phenomenology

What he is objecting to is two-stage, representational theories

that are committed to a fundamental difference in intelligibility

between appearances (representings, how things are for consciousness)

and reality (representeds, how things are in themselves)

according to which the former are immediately

and intrinsically intelligible

and the latter are not

What Hegel talks about is

the gulf, the "difference," the "separation," the two "sides" of one divide

separating appearance and reality, knowing and the known

that he complains about is just this gulf of intelligibility

His critical claim is that

any theory of this form is doomed to yield skeptical results

Of course

Descartes's view is not the only one that Hegel means to be criticizing

Kant, too, has a two-stage, representational theory

Cognitive activity needs to be understood as the product

of both the mind's activities of manipulating representations

(in the sense of representings)

and the relations those representings stand in to what they represent

Both what the mind does with its representations

and how they are related to what they represent

must be considered

in apportioning responsibility for features of those representings

to the things represented

as specified in a vocabulary

that does not invoke either the mind's manipulation of representations

or the relations between representings and represented

(that is, things as they are, as Kant said, "in themselves" [an sich])

or to the representational relations

and what the cognitive faculties do with

and to representings

The latter for Kant yields what the represented things

are "for consciousness,"

in Hegel's terminology: contentful representings

Kant's theory to be sure is not the same as Descartes's

but it shares the two-stage representational structure

that distinguishes the mind's relation to its representings

and its relation to

represented that is mediated

by those representings

Although Kant does sometimes seem to think

that we have a special kind of access to

the products of our own cognitive activity

he does not think of our awareness of our representings

as immediate in any recognizably Cartesian sense

For him, awareness is apperception

The minimal unit of apperception is judgment

To judge, for Kant

is to integrate a conceptually articulated content

into a constellation of commitments

exhibiting the distinctive synthetic unity of apperception

Doing that is extruding from the constellation

commitments incompatible with the judgment being made

and extracting from it inferential consequences

that are then added to that constellation of commitments

This is a process that is mediated

by the relations of material incompatibility

and consequence that relate the concepts

being applied in the judgments

to the concepts applied in other possible judgments

So Kant shares with Descartes the two-stage representational structure

but does not take over

the idea that our relation to our own representations

is one of immediate awareness

Still, his view still falls within the range of Hegel's criticisms

because he maintains the differential intelligibility

of representings and represented

Representings are as such intelligible

and what is represented is, as such, not

I will call this commitment to

a strong differential intelligibility of appearance and reality

the claim that the one is the right sort of thing to be intelligible

and the other is not

Kant gives a new model of intelligibility

to be intelligible is to have a content articulated by concepts

It is the concepts applied in an act of awareness (apperception)

that determine what would count as successfully integrating that judgment

into a whole exhibiting the distinctive synthetic unity of apperception

But the conceptual articulation of judgments

is a form contributed by the cognitive faculty of the understanding

It is not something we can know or assume to characterize

what is represented by those conceptual representings

as they are in themselves

On Hegel's reading

Kant is committed to a gulf of intelligibility

separating our representings from what they are representings of

in the form of the view that the representings are in conceptual shape

and what is represented

the way things are in themselves, is not

Just to remind ourselves how much is at stake in Hegel's criticism

of two-stage representational theories of the relations

between appearance and reality

that are committed to the differential intelligibility of the relata

it is worth thinking in this connection also about Frege

For Frege

discursive symbols express a sense [Sinn]

and thereby designate a referent [Bedeutung]

Senses are what is grasped when one understands the expression

and referents are what is thereby represented

what expressing that sense is talking or thinking about

A sense is a representing

in that what he calls a "mode of presentation"

[Art des Gegebenseins] of a referent

No more than Kant does Frege construe grasp of a sense

as immediate in a Cartesian sense

according to which the mere occurrence of something

with that sense counts as the mind's knowing or understanding something

Rather, grasping a judgeable content

requires mastering the inferential and substitutional relations

it stands in to other such contents

But like Descartes and Kant

Frege thinks that grasping senses

understanding representations as representations

does not require representing them in turn

and that representings in the sense of senses are graspable

in a sense in which what they represent is not

So if, as I have claimed

Hegel's argument is intended to be directed at

two-stage representational models

committed to treating representings as intelligible

in a sense in which representeds are in general not

then it seems Fregean sense-reference theories

as well as the Kantian and Cartesian versions

will be among the targets of Hegel's argument

In order to see whether there is an argument of the sort Hegel is after

that tells against theories of this kind

two-stage representational theories committed to

the strong differential intelligibility of representings and represented

we must next think about what criteria of adequacy

for such theories Hegel is appealing to

In general

we know that what Hegel thinks is wrong with them

is that they lead to skepticism

Further, he tells us that

what he means by this is that

such theories preclude knowing things as they are "in themselves."

I think what is going on here is

that Hegel learned from Kant

that the soft underbelly of epistemological theories is

the semantics they implicitly incorporate and depend upon

And he thinks that two-stage representational theories

committed to the strong differential intelligibility of representings

and what they represent

semantically preclude genuine knowledge of those represented

I will call the criterion of adequacy on epistemological theories

that Hegel is implicitly invoking here

the "Genuine Knowledge Condition" (GKC)

Obviously, a lot turns on what counts as genuine knowledge

But it is clear in any case

that this requirement demands that an epistemological theory

not be committed to a semantics

in particular, a theory of representation

that when looked at closely turns out

to rules out as unintelligible the very possibility

of knowing how things really are ("genuine" knowledge)

I do not take it that the very existence of a contrast

between how we know what is represented

and how we know representings by itself

demonstrates such a failure

Hegel's specific claim is that

when that difference is construed

as one of intelligibility in the strong sense

representings are intrinsically intelligible

and representeds are not

then skepticism about genuine knowledge is a consequence

And he takes from Kant the idea

that intelligibility is a matter of conceptual articulation

to be intelligible is to be in conceptual shape

If this reading is correct

then Hegel's argument must show

that to satisfy the Genuine Knowledge Condition

an epistemological theory must treat not only appearance

(how things subjectively are, for consciousness)

but also reality

(how things objectively are, in themselves) as conceptually articulated

Again, what could count as a good argument for this claim

obviously turns on what is required to satisfy that requirement

Both resemblance and representation models

of the relations between appearance and reality

have a story about what error consists in

This is what happens when on resemblance picture

antecedently intelligible properties are not shared

so that resemblance breaks down

or when there are local breakdowns in the globally defined isomorphism

between the systems of representings and represented

In the middle paragraphs of the Introduction

in which Hegel begins to present his alternative

to two-stage representational epistemological theories

committed to strong differential intelligibility

of representings and represented

the treatment of error looms large

I think we can take it as an implicit criterion of adequacy

Hegel is imposing on epistemological theories

that they make intelligible also the phenomenon

not only of genuine knowledge, but also of error

I will call this the Intelligibility of Error Condition

The Genuine Knowledge Condition and the Intelligibility of Error Condition

are epistemological constraints

The semantics presupposed by

or implicit in an epistemological theory must

Hegel is telling us

not preclude the intelligibility either of genuine knowledge, or of error

being wrong about how things really are.

We must be able to understand both

what it is for what there is to appear as it is

and for it to appear as it is not

An epistemological theory that does not make both of these intelligible

is not adequate to the phenomenon

of our efforts to know and understand how things really are

But approaching epistemology

as Kant suggests, from this semantic direction

suggests that behind these epistemological constraints

are deeper semantic ones

I think that is in fact the case here

We cannot read these off of Hegel's extremely telegraphic remarks

in the text of the opening paragraphs of the Introduction

but must infer them from the solution

he ultimately proposes to the challenges he sets out there

First is what we could (looking over our shoulders at Frege)

call the Mode of Presentation Condition (MPC)

This is the requirement that appearances (senses, representings)

must be essentially, and not just accidentally

appearances of some purported realities

One does not count as properly having grasped an appearing

unless one grasps it as the appearance of something

When all goes well

grasping the appearance must count as a way of

knowing about what it is an appearance of

Appearances must make some reality semantically visible

or otherwise accessible

The claim is not that one ought not to reify appearances

think of them as things

but rather, for instance, adverbially

in terms of being-appeared-to-p-ly

That is not a silly thought

but it is not the present point

The present idea is that

if the epistemological Genuine Knowledge Condition

is to be satisfied by a two-stage, representational model

representings must be semantic presentations

of representeds in a robust sense

in which what one has grasped is not a representation

unless it is grasped as a representation of some represented

Further along we'll see how Hegel, again following Kant

understands this requirement

taking or treating something in practice as a representing

is taking or treating it as subject

to a distinctive kind of normative assessment as to its correctness

in a way in which what thereby counts as represented

serves as a standard for normative assessment of correctness

A second semantic constraint on epistemological theories

that I take to be implicitly in play in

Hegel's understanding of the epistemological Genuine Knowledge Condition

is that if the representational relation is to be understood semantically

in a way that can support genuine knowledge

it must portray what is represented as exerting rational constraint

on representings of it

That is

how it is with what is represented must

when the representation relation is not defective

provide a reason for the representing to be as it is

What we are talking (thinking) about must be able to

provide reasons for what we say (think) about it

We can call this the Rational Constraint Condition (RCC)

Though he does not argue for this constraint in the Introduction

I think in many ways

it is the key premise for the argument that Hegel does offer

The thought is that

the difference between

merely responding differentially to

the presence or absence of a fact or property on one hand

and comprehending it, having thoughts that are about it

in the sense that counts as knowledge if everything goes well

depends on the possibility of that fact or property

being able to serve for the knower as a reason

for having a belief or making a commitment

The central sort of semantic aboutness

depends on being able rationally to take in how things are

in the sense of taking them in

as providing reasons for our attitudes

Those of you who are familiar with the work of

my colleague John McDowell in his language

Hegel learns from Kant

to think about representation in normative terms

What is represented exercises

a distinctive kind of authority over representings

Representings are normatively responsible to what they represent

What is represented serves as a kind of authoritative normative standard

for assessments of the correctness of what count as representings of it

(whether correct or incorrect)

just in virtue of being subject to assessments of their correctness

in which those representeds provide the standard

The Rational Constraint Condition adds that the standard

what is represented

must provide reasons for the assessments

In fact, in the context of Kant's and Hegel's views

this is not a further commitment

For neither of them distinguishes between norms (or rules) on one hand

and norms (or rules) that are rational

in the sense of being conceptually articulated on the other

All norms are for them understood as conceptual norms

Norms or rules, and concepts

are just two ways of thinking about the same thing

Conceptual norms are norms that determine what is a reason for what

For a norm to contentful is for it to have conceptual content

a matter of what it can be a reason for or against

and what can be a reason for or against it

This is the only kind of content they acknowledge

The German Idealists are rationalists about norms

in that norms (rules) are contentful

exclusively in the sense of being conceptually contentful

The Rational Constraint Condition accordingly fills

in the sense of 'representation' or 'aboutness'

on which the Mode of Presentation Condition depends

And these two semantic conditions provide the crucial criteria of adequacy

for satisfying the two epistemological conditions

the Genuine Knowledge Condition

and the Intelligibility of Error Condition

For the intelligibility of genuine knowledge of

or error about how things really are

turns on the rational normative constraint those realities exert

on what count as appearances or representings of those realities

just insofar as the representings are subject to

normative assessments of correctness and incorrectness

(knowledge or error)

in which those realities serve as the standard

in the sense of providing reasons for those assessments

Supposing that these four conditions

two epistemological and two semantic

represent the relevant criteria of adequacy for epistemological theories

(and their implicit semantics)

what in the end is

the argument against two-stage representational theories

that are committed to a strong difference of intelligibility

between representings and representeds (appearance and reality)?

Why can't theories of this form in principle

satisfy the four criteria of adequacy?

It is characteristic of two-stage theories

not just Descartes's but also those of Kant and Frege

that they incorporate a distinction

between two ways of knowing or understanding things

Some things are known (only) representationally

by being represented

Other things

at least some representings, according to the regress argument

are known nonrepresentationally

in some way other than by being represented

If we are interested in investigating cognitive faculties

in the context of theories like this

we are interested in the end in

semantics in the representation relation

For cognitive faculties are the instrument or medium

that produces representings of the real

But then we must ask

is the representational relation

the relation between representings and what they represent

itself something that is known representationally

or it is something that can be known nonrepresentationally?

If it is itself something that is knowable or intelligible

only by being represented

it seems that we are embarked on a vicious Bradleyan regress

(a successor to the one Descartes was worried about)

The epistemological enterprise is not intelligible

unless we can semantically make sense of

the relation between representations of representational relations

and those representational relations

and then representations of those relations, and so on

Until we have grasped all of that infinite chain of

we are not in a position to understand the representational relation

and hence not the "instrument or medium" of representation

Semantic skepticism

skepticism about what it is so much

as to purport to represent something

must then be the result

This argument is essentially

the Cartesian regress-of-representation argument for

nonrepresentational knowledge of representings

but applied now not just to the representings

but to the relation they stand in to what they represent

So on this argument

if epistemology, and so knowledge

is to be intelligible

it seems that within this sort of framework

we must embrace the other horn of the dilemma

and take it that the representation relation is something

that can itself be known or understood non

or representationally

that in this respect

it belongs in a box with the representations

or appearances themselves

Responding this way to the dilemma

concerning our understanding of the representational relation is

in effect, acknowledging the Mode of Presentation Condition

For it is saying

that part of our nonrepresentational understanding

of appearances (representings)

must be understanding them as appearances

(as representings) of something

Their representational properties

their 'of'-ness

their relation to what they at least purport to represent

must be intelligible

in the same sense in which the representings themselves are

The Rational Constraint Condition says that

for appearances to be intelligible

as appearances, representings, modes of presentation

of something

they must be intelligible as rationally constrained

by what they then count as representing

This means that what is represented must be intelligible

as providing reasons for assessments of correctness and incorrectness

of appearances or representings

Reasons are things that can be thought or said

cited as reasons, for instance

for an assessment of a representing as correct or incorrect

as amounting to knowledge or error

That is to say that

what provides reasons for such assessments must itself

no less than the assessments themselves

be in conceptual form

Giving reasons for undertaking a commitment

(for instance, to an assessment of correctness or incorrectness)

is endorsing a sample piece of reasoning

an inference

in which the premises provide good reasons for the commitment

It is to exhibit premises

the endorsement of which entitles one to the conclusion

So the reasons, no less than what they are reasons for

must be conceptually articulated

Put another way

appearances are to be intelligible, graspable

in the sense that they are conceptually articulated

Understanding the judgment that things are thus-and-so

requires knowing what concepts are being applied

and understanding those concepts

One only does that insofar as

one practically masters their role in reasoning

what their applicability provides reasons for and against

and the applicability of what other concepts

would provide reasons for or against their applicability

If the relation between

appearances and the realities they are appearances of

what they represent

how they represent things as being ("thus-and-so")

is to be intelligible in the same sense

that the appearances themselves are

(so that a regress of representation is avoided)

this must be because that relation itself is a conceptual relation

a relation among concepts or concept-applications

a relation between things that are conceptually articulated

The conclusion is that

if the Rational Constraint Condition must be satisfied

in order to satisfy the Genuine Knowledge Condition

and the Intelligibility of Error Condition

(if the RCC really is a semantically necessary condition

on satisfying these epistemological criteria of adequacy)

perhaps because it is a necessary condition

of satisfying the Mode of Presentation Condition

which itself is a necessary semantic condition on

satisfying the epistemological GKC and the IEC

then those conditions cannot be satisfied

by a two-stage representational theory that is committed

to the strong differential intelligibility of representing and represented

If not only representings

but the representation relation must be intelligible

in a sense that requires their conceptual articulation

then both ends of the representation relation

must be conceptually contentful

Only in that way is it intelligible

how what is represented can exert rational constraint on representings

in the sense of providing reasons for assessments

of their correctness or incorrectness

What I want to do in the rest of my talk today

is to begin to introduce the alternative shape of theory

that Hegel is going to recommend to us

So far, I have been working to find structure beneath

what appears on the telegraphic surface of the text

of the opening paragraphs of Hegel's Introduction

I claim so far only to have sketched

a potentially colorable argument

Further exploration is required of the reasons for accepting the RCC

which this exposition reveals

as the principle load-bearing premise of that argument

A key component of that enterprise

would be clarifying the concepts of

conceptual articulation and conceptual content

what the RCC says must

characterize both representing and represented

which commitment to a representational theory

with a strong difference of intelligibility denies

It will help to begin on this latter task

by looking at what sorts of theories

might be thought to be available

once the strong difference of intelligibility of appearance and reality

has been denied

that is

once one is committed to not excavating a gulf of intelligibility

between representings and what they represent

between the appearance and the reality

between the mind and world

One place to begin is with Frege's

proposed definition in "The Thought"

He says "a fact is a thought that is true."

Thoughts for Frege are the senses of declarative sentences

They are claims

in the sense of claimable contents, rather than claimings

A fact, he is saying

is not something that corresponds to

or is represented by such a sense

It just is such a sense

a sense that is true

Facts, for Frege, are a subset of claimables

senses, representings, cognitive appearing

Of course, Frege retains the two-stage representational model

for the relation between senses and their referents

for thoughts, truth-values

And this matters for what he thinks senses are

namely, modes of presentation of referents

But as far as the relations between thoughts and facts are concerned

he does not appeal to that model

Again, Wittgenstein says

in what is possibly

John McDowell's favorite quotation from the investigations

"When we say, and mean

that such-and-such is the case

we��and our meaning��do not stop anywhere short of the fact

but we mean: this��is��so."

In these cases

the content of what we say

our meaning, is the fact

Such an approach is sometimes talked about

under the title of an "identity theory of truth."

It is sometimes attributed, under that rubric, to John McDowell

On such an approach

there is no principled gulf of intelligibility

between appearance and reality

because when all goes well

the appearances inherit their content

from the realities they are appearances of

Thoughts (in the sense of thinkings)

can share their content with the true thoughts

(in the sense of thinkables)

that are the facts they represent

Representings are distinct from represented

so the two-stage representational model is still endorsed

But they are understood as two forms

in which one content can be manifested

What is most striking

I think, about views of this stripe is that

they are committed to the claim, as McDowell puts it in Mind and World

that "the conceptual has no outer boundary."

What is thinkable is identified with what is conceptually contentful

But the objective facts

no less than the subjective thinkings and claiming about them

are understood as themselves already in conceptual shape

The early Wittgenstein, no less than the later

thought of things this way

When he said, "The world is everything that is the case

And what is the case can be said of it

Facts are essentially, and not just accidentally

things that can be stated and thought

Views with these consequences provide a very friendly environment

in which to satisfy the Rational Constraint Condition

and so (in the context of a suitable Kantian

normative understanding of aboutness)

the Mode of Presentation Condition

on understandings of the relations between cognitive appearances

and the realities of which they are appearances

The defensibility and plausibility of this sort of approach

depend principally on the details of the understanding

of the (meta-)concept of the conceptual

(conceptual contentfulness, conceptual articulation)

in terms of which it is explicated

For on some such conceptions

it is extremely implausible and perhaps indefensible

For instance

if one's understanding of concepts is ultimately psychological

then the idea that thoughts (thinkings, believings) and facts

might have the same conceptual content

would seem to have undesirable consequences

If one thinks that what is in the first instance conceptually contentful

is beliefs and thoughts

and that other things

such as visual and auditory sign designs (marks and noises)

can count as conceptually contentful only at one remove

by being expressions of beliefs and thoughts

then the claim that the facts those beliefs and thoughts

(and derivatively, marks and noises) express (when all goes well)

are themselves conceptually contentful

That thought threatens to make the existence of those facts

(including ones that will never be expressed or represented)

objectionably dependent on the existence of thinkings and believing

The same unfortunate sort of implication results from

conjoining the RCC version of the MPC with Davidson's claim

that "Only a belief can justify a belief."

Berkeley claims that the only things

we can intelligibly be understood to represent by our thoughts

are other thoughts (the thoughts of God)

Some of the British Idealists thought that

the reality that appeared to us in thought and belief

consisted of the thought of the Absolute

and thought they had learned that lesson from Hegel

More recently

Derrida (using de Saussure's conceptually pre-Kantian

and pre-Fregean terminology)

offers a picture of a world consisting only of signifiers

with the only things available to be signified being further signifiers

At this point, things have clearly gone badly wrong

If Hegel's opening argument has to be filled-in

in a way that has this sort of idealism as its consequence

we ought to exploit it by modus tollens

not modus ponens

In fact, though, Hegel's idea is that

the criteria of adequacy for accounts of the relations

between appearance and reality that underline his argument

can be satisfied without untoward consequences

but only in the context of quite a different

wholly nonpsychological conception of conceptual contentfulness

The kind of idealism

that requires a "world-thinker" on the objective side

no less than a finite thinker on the subjective side

is indeed, for Hegel and for us, a reduction

But what it should lead us to reject is not the claim

that two-stage representational theories must avoid

making strong distinctions of intelligibility

between representings and represented

(because they cannot then satisfy

the RCC and MPC

and so not the epistemological

GKC and IEC either

What we should reject

is the particular conception of conceptual articulation

(and hence intelligibility)

with which they have been conjoined

Hegel gets his concept of conceptual content

from thinking about Kant's theory of judgment

and taking on board Kant's understanding of concepts

as functions of judgment

Kant understands judging

in normative and pragmatic terms

On the normative side

he understands judging as committing oneself

taking responsibility for something

endorsing the judged content

On the pragmatic side

he understands these normative doings in practical terms

as a matter of what one is committed or responsible for doing

What one is responsible for doing is

integrating the endorsed content into a constellation of other commitments

that exhibits the distinctive unity of apperception

Doing that ("synthesizing" the unity)

is extruding from the dynamically evolving unity commitments

that are materially incompatible with the new commitment

and extracting and endorsing, so adding, commitments

that are its material consequences

Judging that p, for Kant

is committing oneself to integrating p with

what one is already committed to

synthesizing a new constellation exhibiting

that rational unity characteristic of apperception

From Hegel's point of view

that extrusion or expulsion of incompatible commitments

and extraction of and expansion

according to consequential commitments

is the inhalation and exhalation

the breathing rhythm by which a rational subject lives and develops

Synthesizing a normative subject

which must exhibit the synthetic unity

distinctive of apperception

is a rational process

because if one judgment is materially incompatible with another

it serves as a reason against endorsing the other

and if one judgment has another

as a material inferential consequence

it serves as a reason for endorsing that other

Understanding the activity of judging

in terms of synthesis-by-integration

into a rational unity of apperception

requires that judgeable contents stand to one another

in relations of material incompatibility and consequence

For it is such relations that normatively

constrain the apperceptive process of synthesis

determining what counts as a proper or successful fulfilling

of the judging subject's integrative task-responsibility or commitment

Concepts, as functions of judgment

determine what counts

as a reason for or against their applicability

and what their applicability counts as a reason for or against

Since this is true of all concepts

not just formal or logical ones

the incompatibility and inferential consequence relations

the concepts determine must in general

be understood as material

(that is having to do with non-logical content of the concepts)

not just as logical

(having to do with their logical form)

Well, I have introduced the idea of conceptual content

as articulated

by relations of material incompatibility and consequence

in Kantian terms of the norms

such contents impose on the process of judgment

as rational integration

their providing standards for the normative assessment

of such integration as correct or successful

settling what one has committed oneself to do

or made oneself responsible for doing in endorsing a judgeable content

But I also said that

Hegel's notion of conceptual content is not a psychological one

One could mean by that claim

that what articulates conceptual content is normative relations

a matter of what one ought to do

rather than something that can be read immediately off of

what one actually does or is disposed to do

That distinction is indeed of the essence for Kant

(and further for Hegel)

But in Hegel's hands

this approach to conceptual content shows itself to be nonpsychological

in a much more robust sense

For he sees that

it characterizes not only the process of thinking on the subjective side

of the intentional nexus

but also what is thought about, on the objective side

For objective properties

and so the facts concerning which objects exhibit which properties

also stand in relations of material incompatibility and consequence

Natural science, paradigmatically Newton's physics

reveals objective properties and facts as standing to one another

in lawful relations of exclusion and consequence

That two bodies subject to no other forces collide

is materially

(non-logically, because of laws of nature)

incompatible with their accelerations not changing

That the acceleration of a massive object is changed

has as a material consequence

(lawfully necessitates) that a force has been applied to it

In the first case

the two ways the world could be

do not just contrast with one another

They don't just differ

It is impossible

so Newtonian physics tells us it's not logic

It's physically impossible

that both should be facts

And in the second case

it is physically necessary

a matter of the laws of physics

that if a fact of the first kind were to obtain

so would a fact of the second kind

It follows that

if by "conceptual" we mean, with Hegel

"standing in relations of material incompatibility and consequence,"

then the objective facts and properties

natural science reveals to as physical reality

are themselves in conceptual shape

Modal realism, the claim that

some states of affairs necessitate others

and make others impossible

the acknowledgment of laws of nature

entails conceptual realism in this sense

the claim that the way the world objectively is

is conceptually articulated

This is a non-psychological conception of the conceptual in a robust sense

because having conceptual content

standing in relations of material incompatibility and consequence

does not require anyone to think or believe anything

If Newton's laws are true

then they held before there were thinkers

and would hold even if there never were thinkers

The facts governed by those laws

for instance early collisions of particles

stood in lawful relations of relative impossibility and necessity

to other possible facts

and hence on this conception of the conceptual

had conceptual content

quite independently of whether any subjective processes

of thinking had gone on

were going on, or ever would go on

(in this, or any other possible world)

Hegel thinks that underlying this point

about the conceptual character of objective reality is a deeper one

For he thinks that the idea of determinateness itself is to be understood

in terms of standing in relations of incompatibility and consequence

to other things that are determinate in the same sense

He endorses Spinoza's principle

"Omnis determinatio est negatio."

For something to be determinate is

for it to be one way rather than some other way

This thought is incorporated in the twentieth-century

concept of information (due to Shannon)

which understands information

in terms of the partition each bit establishes between

how things are (according to the information) and how they are not

Everyone would I agree

that if a property does not contrast with any properties

if it is not even different from any of them

then it is just indeterminate

To know that an object had such a property

would be to know nothing about it

Beginning already in the Perception chapter of the Phenomenology

Hegel argues that determinateness requires

more than mere difference from other things

It requires what he calls "exclusive" [ausschlie? end] difference

The properties square and circular are exclusively different properties

since possession by a plane figure of the one excludes

rules out

or is materially incompatible with possession of the other

The properties square and green are merely or indifferently different

in that though they are distinct properties

possession of the one does not preclude possession of the other

An essential part of the determinate content of a property

what makes it the property it is

and not some other one

is the relations of material modally robust incompatibility it stands

in to other determinate properties

(for instance, shapes to other shapes, and colors to other colors)

We can make sense of the idea of merely different properties

such as square and green only in a context

in which they come in families of shapes and colors

whose members are exclusively different from one another

An important argument for understanding determinateness Hegel's way

in terms of exclusive difference or material incompatibility

(one pursued in the Perception chapter)

is that it is required to underwrite

an essential aspect of the structural difference between the fundamental

ontological categories of object and property (particular and universal)

Aristotle had already pointed out a structural asymmetry

between these categories

It makes sense

to think of each property as coming with a converse

in the sense of a property that is exhibited by all

and only the objects that do not exhibit the index property

Has a mass greater than 5 grams

is a property that has a converse in this sense

But it does not make sense to think of objects as coming with converses

in the analogous sense of

an object that exhibits all and only the properties

that are not exhibited by the index object

This is precisely

because some of those properties will be incompatible with one another

and so cannot be exhibited by a single object

The number 9 has the properties of being a number

not being prime, being odd, and not being divisible by 5

If it had a converse

that object would have to have the properties of not being a number

being prime, being even, and being divisible by 5

But nothing can have all of those properties

It follows that a world that is categorially determinate

in that it includes determinate properties and objects

so facts must be determinate in Hegel's sense

the properties must stand to one another

in relations of material incompatibility

If they do that

they will also stand to one another in relations of material consequence

since a property P will have the property Q as a consequence

if everything incompatible with Q is incompatible with P

So being a bear has being a vertebrate as a consequence

since everything incompatible with being a vertebrate

for instance being a prime number

is incompatible with being a bear

Since Hegel understands being conceptually contentful

as standing to other such items

in relations of material incompatibility and consequence

to take the objective world to be minimally determinate

in the sense of consisting of facts about what objects have what properties

that is to take the world to be conceptually structured in his sense

For him

only conceptual realists are entitled to think of objective reality

as so much as determinate

(Modal realism pretty much comes for free

We didn't need Newtonian physics

to get to conceptual realism in this sense

the barest Aristotelian metaphysics is already enough

This is the conception of the conceptual at the core of Hegel's thought

that is non-psychological in a very strong sense

In this sense

there is no problem with seeing both sides of

the appearance/reality distinction as conceptually structured

So we are not on that account obliged

to excavate a gulf of intelligibility between them

For the same reason

the principal obstacle to satisfying the Rational Constraint Condition

and therefore the Mode of Presentation Condition, is removed

Though I haven't yet said anything positive

about how they might be satisfied, either

that's the topic of my next lecture

That means in turn

that the semantic presuppositions

that I have been reading Hegel as taking to make it impossible

to satisfy the epistemological criteria of adequacy expressed

by the Genuine Knowledge Condition

and the Intelligibility of Error Condition can also be avoided

Access to all of these desirable consequences is

to be opened up by the non-psychological structural

understanding of the conceptual

in terms of relations of material incompatibility and (so) consequence

Hegel's term for what I have been calling "material incompatibility"

is "determinate negation" [bestimmte Negation]

His term for what I have been calling "material consequence"

is "mediation" [Vermittlung]

after the role of the middle term in classical syllogistic inference

The first is the more fundamental concept for Hegel

perhaps in part because, as I just argued

wherever there are relations of incompatibility

there will also be relations of consequence

Hegel often contrasts determinate negation

(material incompatibility)

with what he calls "formal" or "abstract" negation

(logical inconsistency)

square is a (not the) determinate negation of circular

where not-circular is the (not a) formal negation of it

(These are Aristotelian contraries, rather than contradictories)

We are in a position to see that

the choice of the term "determinate" to mark this difference

is motivated by Hegel's view

that it is just relations of determinate negation

in virtue of which anything is determinate at all

This is as true of thoughts as it is of things

of discursive commitments on the subjective side of cognitive activity

no less than of facts on the side of the objective reality

the subject knows of and acts on

That is why

though the conception is at base non-psychological

Hegel's metaconcept of the conceptual

does also apply to psychological states and processes

Thinkings and believings, too, count as determinately

and so conceptually contentful

in virtue of standing to other possible thinkings and believing

in relations of material incompatibility and consequence

But are subjective commitments conceptually contentful

in the same sense that objective facts are

even in Hegel's definition?

When we say that

being pure copper and being an electrical insulator

are materially incompatible

we mean that it is (physically, not logically) impossible

that one and the same object,

at one and the same time, has both properties

But when we say that the commitments to a's being pure copper

and a's being an electrical insulator are materially incompatible

we do not mean that it is impossible for one and the same subject

at one and the same time, to undertake both commitments

We mean rather that one ought not to do so

That 'ought' has the practical significance

that violating it means that one is subject to

adverse normative assessment

that any subject with two commitments

that are materially incompatible in this sense

is obliged to do something, to relinquish (or modify) at least one of them

so as to repair the inappropriate situation

But it is still entirely possible for a subject to find itself

in this inappropriate normative situation

This is to say that

the relations of material incompatibility and consequence

in virtue of which objective facts and properties are determinate

are alethic modal relations

a matter of what is conditionally possible or impossible and necessary

The relations of material incompatibility and consequence

in virtue of which the commitments undertaken

and predicates applied by discursive subjects

are determinate

are deontic normative relations

a matter of what one is conditionally entitled and committed to

We may think of these as alethic and deontic modalities, if we like

but they are still very different modalities

Hegel is writing downstream from Kant's use of "necessity"

[Notwendigkeit]

as a genus covering both cases

"Notwendig" for Kant

means "according to a rule."

He can accordingly see what he calls "natural necessity"

and "practical necessity" as species of one genus

(They correspond to different uses of the English "must." for instance)

Nonetheless, these are very different modalities

substantially different senses of "necessary" (or "must")

The worry accordingly arises

that two quite distinct phenomena are being run together

and that the attempted assimilation

consists of nothing more than the indiscriminate use

of the same verbal label "conceptual."

One of the metacommitments for which I claimed Kant's authority

is that to be intelligible

(in a successor-sense to Descartes's)

is to be conceptually structured or

what on this broadly structuralist-functionalist account of content

amounts to the same thing��conceptually contentful

Once again following Kant

Hegel understands understanding (and so intelligibility)

in ultimately pragmatic terms

as a matter of what one must be able practically to do

to count as exercising such understanding

What one must do in order to count thereby

as grasping or understanding the conceptual content

of a discursive commitment one has undertaken

is be sensitive in practice

to the normative obligations it involves

That means acknowledging commitments that are its consequences

and rejecting those that are incompatible with it

What about the intelligibility of objective states of affairs

which are conceptually contentful

in virtue of

the alethic modal connections of incompatibility-and-consequence

they stand in to other such states of affairs

rather than the deontic normative relations

that articulate the conceptual content of discursive commitments?

The key point, I think

is that what one needs to do in order thereby to count

as practically taking or treating two objective states of affairs

as alethically incompatible

is to precisely acknowledge that

if one finds oneself with both the corresponding commitments

one is deontically obliged to reject or reform at least one of them

And what one needs to do in order thereby to count

as practically taking or treating one objective state of affairs

as a necessary (lawful) consequence of another

is to acknowledge the corresponding commitment to one

as a consequence of the corresponding commitment to the other

Here "corresponding" commitments

are those whose deontic normative conceptual relations

track the alethic modal conceptual relations

of the objective states of affairs

Isomorphism between

deontic normative conceptual relations of

incompatibility-and-consequence among commitments

and alethic modal relations of

incompatibility-and-consequence among states of affairs

determines how one takes things objectively to be

Practically acquiring and altering one's commitments

in accordance with a certain set of deontic norms

of incompatibility-and-consequence

is taking the objective alethic modal relations articulating

the conceptual content of states of affairs to be the isomorphic ones

Because of these relations

normatively acknowledging a commitment with a certain conceptual content

is taking it that things objectively are thus-and-so

that is, it is taking a certain fact to obtain

And that is to say that

in immediately grasping the deontic normative

conceptual content of a commitment

one is grasping it as the appearance of a fact

whose content is articulated by the corresponding (isomorphic)

alethic modal relations of incompatibility-and-consequence

This is how the Mode of Presentation Condition is satisfied

in this sort of two-stage representational model

while giving up a strong distinction of intelligibility

The Rational Constraint Condition is satisfied

because if the subject is asked why

that is, for what reason

one is obliged to give up a commitment to Q(a)

upon acknowledging a commitment to P(a)

(something we express explicitly

by the use of deontic normative vocabulary)

the canonical form of a responsive answer is

because it is impossible for anything to exhibit both properties P and Q

(something expressible explicitly

by the use of alethic modal vocabulary)

The Genuine Knowledge Condition is satisfied on this model

in the sense that it is not semantically precluded

by the model that the epistemic commitment to isomorphism of

the subjective norms of incompatibility-and-consequence

and the objective modal facts which is implicit in the semantic relation

between them should hold objectively

at least locally and temporarily

The model also makes sense of the possibility of error

For following, Kant construes

the representation relation in normative terms

In manipulating commitments

according to a definite set of conceptual norms

(deontic relations of incompatibility-and-consequence)

one is committing oneself to the objective modal facts

(to the alethic relations of incompatibility-and-consequence)

being a certain way

as well as to the gound-level empirical determinate facts

they articulate being as one takes them to be

the model also says what must be the case for

that isomorphism (or homomorphism) relation

to fail to hold in fact

Then one has gotten the facts wrong

perhaps including the facts about

what concepts articulate the objective world

In this lecture I have aimed to do six things

To demarcate explicitly the exact range of epistemological theories

epitomized by those of Descartes and Kant

that fall within the target-area of Hegel's criticism

To set out clearly the objection

that he is making to theories of that kind

in a way that does not make his argument obviously miss its mark

To formulate Hegel's criteria of adequacy for a theory

that would not be subject to that objection

which he is implicitly putting in play

More positively, to lay out the non-psychological conception

of the conceptual

that will form the backbone of Hegel's response

(even though that conception is not officially introduced

in the Introduction itself

but must wait for the opening chapters of Consciousness section)

To sketch the general outlines of an epistemological and semantic approach

based on that conception of the conceptual

And finally, to indicate how such an approach

might satisfy the criteria of adequacy for a theory

that is not subject to Hegel's objection

In the next lecture

I look more closely at the account of representation

that I take Hegel to construct out of elements

put in play by this discussion

Thank you

Somebody wants time for discussion?